1. Yes, TV Lowers Your Attention Span

Since television -- especially children's TV -- is lightning-fast and loaded with stimuli, it isn't outlandish to think that a person's brain might become adjusted to that pace over time.

When a teacher cannot supplement his or her lectures with dinosaurs and explosions, a child's television-altered attention span may be so deprived that the child cannot stay focused.

"Now kids, to help us learn about the pyramids, Christian Bale is going to come in and run over a history book with the Batmobile."

But most of us who don't buy into "the modern world is destroying the children!" alarmism have trouble believing that too much TV can actually rewire your attention span in any significant way.

But an Iowa State University study sure enough found that students who stare at a screen for more than two hours per day are twice as likely to be diagnosed with attention problems, which is awesome when you consider that the average amount of time a child spends watching television and playing video games is 4.26 hours a day.

They'd at least have to go outside to buy drugs.

The study followed 1,323 children in grades three through five and 210 college students.

The results make it fairly hard to argue that television doesn't literally change the way the human brain functions, with enough exposure.

But even stranger, other studies have shown (just like with the example above) that the amount of television watched as an infant can affect attention habits later in life.

So again, if you want your kids to be able to pay attention to anything for longer than 38 seconds, you need to move into a hotel and wheel the television out onto the balcony like Craig T. Nelson in Poltergeist.